Performing with Mr. Revich is the pianist Fiorenzo Pascalucci.
Beethoven composed his Kreutzer Sonata for Piano and Violin in 1803.
Beethoven understood how different this new sonata was from any that had come before, including his own eight. His title page describes it as a “Sonata for the pianoforte and violin obbligato, written in a very concertato style, almost like a concerto” – in other words, nothing like the modest sonatas for keyboard with optional violin accompaniment of Mozart’s youth.
The Sonata begins with a slow introduction, something expected more in a symphony than a violin sonata, and the violin has the first notes, echoed by the piano. This chromatic introduction emphasizes the key of D minor, making it harmonically a bookend matching the coda of the finale. The main Presto is a vigorously driven – although also often interrupted – dialog in A minor, whose passionate intensity later inspired Leo Tolstoy’s short story, “The Kreutzer Sonata”.
The second movement is an expansive theme with four variations and a coda. With the variations, Beethoven follows a pattern much like Mozart’s letting the piano dominate the first variation and the violin the second, and putting his next-to-last variation in minor mode.
Mr. Revich was born in Russia and now lives in Vienna, Austria.
Here are our two performers, and they play the Kreutzer Sonata for you:
